Thank heavens for Off-Off-Broadway! It gives you the chance to see a superb work by Paul Dick who has written over 15 musicals based on classical works of literature, among them, Wuthering Heights at the Mint Theatre Space, and Madame Bovary reviewed here. Still, his work hasn’t yet received the broad recognition it deserves — it’s awaiting! And now’s your chance to come to know him, and see a moving, song-filled exciting show.

A symposium — a drinking party with dinner in the offing, only here the participants are not Socrates and the male literati of the “golden age” of ancient Athens, as in Plato’s dramatic dialogue. This symposium is of 20th-century writers and — quite an update! — they’re all women: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Agatha Christie, Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker, along with Muriel Gardiner, well known for saving many Jews during World War II, and Bernadette, a young house maid. The time is early in the war, and the gathering at the Stein-Toklas household in the French mountains.